Humanities
by JohnGreenGirl
Summary: What I imagine the human lives of the Cullen family to have been like, in chronological order of each member becoming a vampire. It's a guilty pleasure of mine to play with these characters...
1. Carlisle Cullen

**Carlisle Cullen**

* * *

><p><em>1645<em>

When little Carlisle Cullen is five years old, he sees a vampire for the first time. He doesn't know that is what she is; he only knows that she is the prettiest lady he's ever seen and she talks to him in a low voice that sounds like music.

"_Mon petit_," she says, patting his head of light gold waves, "you must remember: posy keeps the plague away. Keep this in your pocket, and the angels will bless you." After tucking the sprig into the pocket over his heart, she presses a kiss to Carlisle's forehead. Even though he can see now her eyes are red, not brown like he thought, he isn't afraid. How could anyone so lovely be bad?

"Thank you, Madame," his father says, turning Carlisle away from the woman. "We appreciate your blessing in a time when so many have died. May the angels watch over you, too." Carlisle's father never lets him talk to people for long. He says there are too many demons in human form, and that Carlisle should trust no one, especially 'unfortunates'. The unfortunates, he says, are deformed because the devil has such a tight hold on their souls.

Even after the posies all die and are dried ghosts of what they once were, Carlisle keeps the sprig from the woman in a drawer near his bed. She was so nice, and he wishes, deep down inside, that she were his mother.

_1651_

For his eleventh birthday, Carlisle's father gives him a rosary. "You will need it, my boy, for you are almost a man. In just two years, you will join me and our brothers on our hunts. This will keep you safe, because it was your mother's. She watches over you now from heaven."

He feels safer with it so close to his heart, especially since his other birthday gift was a book written by his father and his followers about the demons they hunt. Carlisle is supposed to study it, but it gives him nightmares. Instead, he leaves it in his room and goes to play with the other young boys. Even though he is a pastor's son, and can never be a knight, that is the game he and the others play.

Carlisle doesn't want to hunt demons. He wants to wear suits of armor and have his own horse. Horses are the only envy he holds against the merchant and noble sons. When you have a horse, you can go where you want and do what you want. When you have a horse, you don't have to say in London your whole life.

Play time doesn't last long, though, because His Majesty the King is holding a parade for his son. So instead of _playing_ knights, Carlisle will get to see real knights. At noon, his father puts Carlisle on top of two boxes so that he can see over the heads of others.

With his uninterrupted view, Carlisle can see the king and queen, riding tall and proud on their horses. He can see the court, with the dukes and earls and ladies. One of the ladies, a lady in waiting, he thinks, is too familiar. She has dark hair and fair skin and eyes so brown they look…red. And then he realizes, as she winks one of those red eyes at him, that she is the French woman he saw six years ago.

She looks just as young now as she did then.

Carlisle thinks of the rosary he got that day, and smiles at the woman as she passes. Even though his father has never told him what his mother looked like, Carlisle decides that this woman must be her, showing up in his life to check on him.

_1653_

Tonight is the first time Carlisle will come along for a hunt. He has his own belt with loops, now, so that he can carry the stake he was trained to use and the cross that will burn the demons, and the sword that will let him kill without getting too close.

He is no longer afraid. Now he is thirteen; he is a man, and men are not afraid.

So it is with great courage that he faces the night. It is cloudy, and there is no moon, so they must carry torches. Carlisle gets to have one, which means he will be on the front lines. "What do you do if you come upon one, and they get too close?"

"Sword first, and if that fails, the stake. Only use the cross as the last effort." This has been drilled into his head for two years. Carlisle thinks he could repeat it in his sleep. But this means he is prepared and that he will do well on his first-ever hunt.

It doesn't take long for the men to reach the house that they will siege. The older men have been watching for months, and they have come to the conclusion that the people who reside there are the dreaded vampires. As his father knocks on the door, Carlisle says a silent prayer to his mother to keep all of them safe.

The wife of the household opens the door. Carlisle's father grabs her arm roughly and pulls her into the circle of men in her yard. They restrain her at once, and his father waves him forward. "Get the husband. I will check for children to take to the orphanage. You know these vile creatures can't have their own. They steal human ones to feed on, and then blame sickness for the deaths as these have."

Carlisle does as he is told. At thirteen, he is actually bigger than this man and that makes him feel even more grown up. Like he has seen his father do thousands of times, he pulls the man's arms back and forces him through the doorway.

"Carlisle! You will read our scripture to condemn, and then you will have your first kill." Practically glowing with pride, Carlisle recites the words without even looking at the book. Then he draws his sword as the other men immobilize the male vampire, and with the clean stroke he was taught, he decapitates him.

Almost immediately, the smile fades from his face. Vampires are supposed to be dead. If this man were already dead, why is he bleeding so much? Why does Carlisle have this man's blood splattered on his face? "Now the other, Carlisle, quick!"

It is with a stiff arm that Carlisle ends the woman's life. When he looks up from her now dead form, he sees an all too familiar face. This time, she does not smile or offer kisses. The woman looks like she is in pain, like she is barely able to hold something back.

In that moment, Carlisle realizes that his father is wrong. That the people he kills are human, and that his angel that he imagined to be his mother is the one thing he has been taught to hate above all else.

She is a vampire.

_1656_

Carlisle becomes a studious boy. Because he is the son of a pastor, he has been educated just as well as the nobles. He can read and he can write; he knows how to read maps and even how to decipher Bible code, which is how pastors sometimes send coded messages. On top of that, he can speak not only English but Latin and Italian fluently.

For reasons his father did not understand, when he was fourteen, Carlisle begged to be taught French. Before that summer was over, his father found a tutor for him, and before his fifteenth birthday, Carlisle had become fluent in that, too.

He spends his days holed up in the great book rooms that only pastor and wealthy children have access to. More often than not, Carlisle can be found sitting in an alcove, his sheathed sword hanging off the side, his fair crown of waves bent over some thick leather-bound book. And, more often than not, when the clock strikes noon, he is joined for lunch by a girl.

This girl is named Elizabeth, and with her red, red hair, blue eyes and freckles, she is everything that the vampire woman who haunts Carlisle's dreams is not. Elizabeth is alive, and the daughter of a baron. And every day of that summer, she brings peaches and apples, slices of bread and good dairy cheese, and always a container of still-warm tea. She is the only one who is able to draw Carlisle away from his books.

With her sweet, soft voice and pink cheeks and pink lips, Carlisle decides _she_ is the prettiest girl he's ever seen. One day, as they sit outside, he picks her a bouquet of pink and white wildflowers. She smiles and tells Carlisle he's the sweetest boy, and so unlike the noble sons who look at all the girls like they are entitled to take them.

When he is sixteen, Carlisle falls in love. It's the sweet, first love. The kind that makes him think of her even when he's lost in his world of study. The kind that makes Carlisle do stupid, reckless things that would make his father frown with disapproval. Like the night that he steals away from home when there is a meteor shower.

Carlisle no long fears the night. Even though the woman who haunts him is not the angel he thought, he also knows from a hunt shortly after he turned sixteen that she protects him. The werewolf had come out of nowhere, killing Robert, his hunting partner. The beast was about to start in on Carlisle too, when out of nowhere came the woman, easily and cleanly killing the mutt before his fangs reached Carlisle's neck. Shocked into stillness, Carlisle stood frozen as the woman again placed a kiss to his forehead. Her eyes were the brightest red he had ever seen.

On the night of the meteor shower, he tosses rocks at Elizabeth's window until she opens it, confused but smiling, her hair mussed and in her nightgown. She blushes and closes the window when she sees Carlisle down below. Moments later, she throws it open. "Catch me?" she whispers down to him. "Always."

That night, they lay amongst the grass and wildflowers of summer, watching the stars fall and whispering wishes to each other. Carlisle does not think life can get any better.

_1657_

What Carlisle never anticipated was life getting _worse._ At seventeen, he decides he wants to marry Elizabeth. He really should, anyway, after what they did one night in the book room where he spends most of his time. In their minds, that night makes them more married than if a pastor declared they were. He's going to tell her they should one winter day as they walk around town, but…

Elizabeth begins to cough. This isn't really anything of concern for winter. Lots of people have colds. But Elizabeth's cough goes on and on, even when Carlisle rubs her back. When she pulls her hand away from her mouth when the fit finally ends, it's stained red with her blood. Upon the sight, Elizabeth faints. Carlisle runs with her in his arms, a desperate boy, and takes her to the doctor. But he already knows he'll say the words everyone fears. _Sweating sickness._

Elizabeth will be lucky to see Carlisle's eighteenth birthday, which comes in February, months before her sixteenth in June. With the month being December, she's only given a little over two month to live. When she dies before the New Year, something inside good, sweet Carlisle Cullen dies with her. With his knowledge he has gained from reading legends and myths and the Holy Bible, he quickly becomes the best hunter in his father's team. He devotes himself to this and nothing else. His biggest prize is his most elusive; the vampire woman who he long ago fancied to be his mother.

Where before, Carlisle dreaded inheriting the family business, he now looks forward to the day.

_1660_

The day comes the year Carlisle turns twenty. After a hunt for a vampire, a _real_ vampire, his father's leg is deemed useless. It has been crushed by the monster before Carlisle and the others are able to burn it to pieces. The doctors amputate it, fitting him with a wooden peg and a cane so he can still get around. However, he loses his life's passion in the process. One day, when he is alone in the house, he takes his own life.

In a letter he leaves to Carlisle, he warns him not to end up like him. To find love again, before the hunt is all he has. But for Carlisle, it's already too late. Like father like son. The hunt is already all Carlisle has, and it will be for the next three years.

He becomes so adept at killing monsters that people around London fancy him a holy knight. On August 20th, 1660, Carlisle's childhood dream becomes true. King Charles II knights him, giving him the title of Sir Carlisle, Holy Protector of London. This, with his good looks, enamors women. But Carlisle has shelved Elizabeth's memory deep in his heart, and he only has eyes for one woman: The French vampire.

Carlisle imagines that finding her will be the best day of his life. He will finally be free. Maybe, if he's lucky, he'll even find love again.

_1663_

The day comes. Carlisle has finally tracked her to the sewers; he guesses she has exhausted all of her ruses as a villager and as a member of the royal court. What he does not guess is that it is his actions that have driven that coven of vampires to the sewers, for they fear him. And he certainly does not guess that they are starved for blood.

He goes alone. After all, this is his fight to end. His one-sided, delusional fight. Having pried open the entrance to the sewer, he slips in quietly. Silently, he thinks. What he does not know is that the vampires can hear his heart _thump-thump_ in his chest, that they can smell his sweet, hot blood. With great care, he shields his torch, looking this way and that for his prey.

The transition from hunter to hunted comes so quickly that Carlisle doesn't even have time to get his hands up. The fangs are already in his neck, his side, his thigh; anywhere the veins are thick and the blood runs close to the skin. There is only one thought he is able to form, and that, simply is _this is bad._ But, as quickly as they came, the fangs are ripped from him, leaving sloppy, seeping wounds over his body. Then _she_ is there, with her dark hair and her eyes now a pupil-less black. She is the one who rips them away and catches Carlisle when he finds he can no longer stand on his own two feet.

Silently, she picks him up. She isn't breathing, and she is at least a foot shorter than Carlisle, but he can feel both her stillness and her strength. Though he is twenty three, he feels all of two feet tall and two years old. She is murmuring words to him in French, but he hurts so much he doesn't even try to understand them.

Softly, softly, she places him in a hiding place inside a giant chest of potatoes. If the burning in his veins weren't so bad, Carlisle would question this place, but it is, so he doesn't. Just as she did the first day they met, the vampire places her hand atop his head and kisses his forehead. "I am sorry, _mon petit._"

Under a nest of potatoes, Carlisle hides for three days. He knows what is happening, but doesn't believe it. Over and over in his head, he recites prayers to God, asking that this end, that it not happen. When the sun sets on the third day, all the fire has left his body. He feels strong and his now sharpened senses scare him. Under the cloak of night, he steals away to the forest, only one thought on his mind: suicide.

Carlisle Cullen is now a vampire, but that doesn't mean he likes it. That doesn't mean he won't do everything in his power to undo this bad stroke of luck.


	2. Jasper Whitlock Hale

**Jasper Whitlock Hale**

* * *

><p><em>1850<em>

It is Jasper Whitlock's sixth birthday. What he really, _really_ wants is a dog. A hunting dog, so that he won't have to be alone in the woods when he and his father go hunting, but he'd never tell his father that he's afraid of the woods. Jasper is the oldest, and the only boy. If _he _can't help be the man of the family, little baby Phoebe sure isn't going to.

Jasper's day starts with Ma making his favorite buckwheat pancakes and sausage for breakfast. After, Father doesn't even make him help with chores. Instead, he is allowed to ride old Mary Lou, the oldest horse his father has and the one he's been teaching Jasper to ride. At lunch, Ma makes more of Jasper's favorite food, and even makes him lemonade and gives him a piece of horehound candy.

But the best part of the day is just after noon, when Father announces he and Jasper are going to town. "Six years old is a big boy age, little man. Big boys get to pick out their birthday presents." So Ma scrubs the dirt from Jasper's face and out of his honey gold hair and has him dress in his nice church clothes. Jasper does feel like a big boy, getting to ride on the wagon seat like Father instead of in the back.

"Now, Jasper, I know you want a dog," had he really been that bad at hiding it? He tried his best to keep it a secret. He'd only told Phoebe, and she's a baby, so she couldn't have told. "Today we're going to get you one. Mr. Wilson's dog, his big Britney Spaniel? She had puppies a few weeks ago. He knows how much you love playing with Shy, so he said you could have one of her pups." Jasper smiles up at Father with his patchwork of missing baby teeth. Surely, this is the best birthday any boy had ever had.

Jasper names his puppy Johnny, mostly because it sounds like an all right name for a dog and because his best friend's name was Johnny, but he moved to Georgia last winter. Now his new best friend will be named Johnny, too.

_1855_

Phoebe ruins _everything._ This is worse than the time she was getting baby teeth, and chewed on Jasper's wooden toy soldier. It is even worse than the time she had dropped all of the bullets Jasper had carefully made for Father into the well. Because of Phoebe, running through the prairie grass with her hand full of weed flowers, Shadow had spooked. And bucked. And Jasper had fallen off the horse hard, taking it all on his left arm, and now it's broken.

Jasper is so mad; he isn't even scared when Shadow barrels over him, running toward the stable. He wishes Phoebe were a boy, so he could hit her. Ma comes running out and scoops up little Phoebe, who is crying because she knows Jasper is mad at her, and because even she knows that his arm shouldn't be hanging limply and at that angle.

"Are you all right, Jasper?" She asks, helping him to his feet. "No." Jasper's too mad to cry, even though his arm does hurt something awful. How is he supposed to help Father tomorrow with a broken arm? Now he can't even go to the railroad camp, or see the wild cowboys. "Let's go get your father. Maybe he can fix it without having to take you to town."

Even though Jasper is only ten, his father takes him down the way to old man Cole's, who's a known moonshiner. When Mr. Cole sees the angle of Jasper's arm, he doesn't even charge Father. He just hands him a Mason jar full of rank, clear liquid. Then Father takes Jasper to the stable and tells him to take a big swallow, and don't tell Ma. The stuff burns all the way down his throat and explodes like fire in his stomach.

"Why'd you let me drink moonshine, Father?" The stable looks blurry and Jasper finds his feet don't quite work right anymore. "So this won't hurt so badly," he says, and yanks Jasper's arm into place so hard and so fast he doesn't even have time to blink. Jasper knows it hurts, but it's in a detached way. It doesn't even feel like it was his arm that just got pulled. Then Father wraps a piece of cloth around his arm and neck to make a sling.

"I can't take you with me to the railroad camp, Jasper. But I'm leaving this moonshine here in the stable. If your arm gets to be too much, take a sip, but no more than a sip. Your ma will tan my hide if she finds out." Jasper goes to bed without eating; he doesn't think he'd be able to, anyway. Father tells Ma it's just because of his arm.

The whole week Father is gone, Jasper sneaks sips of moonshine from the stable. Not because his arm hurts that bad, but because he likes the burn of it in his chest.

_1857_

Jasper and Johnny get to go hunting alone. Father gives him the good shotgun and a handful of bullets. Jasper knows this is a test from Father. If he can hunt alone, than he can take care of himself. And if Jasper can take care of himself, than he can help their neighbor, Mr. Johnson, with his cattle. Phoebe, seven years old and honey blonde like her brother, is crying. She's convinced that he'll never come home and kisses his cheek over and over again. Ma is better, only kissing him once and giving him a canteen of water and some bread and jam for his lunch.

Old Johnny is exactly half the age of Jasper, who is twelve. Jasper is the first boy in his grade at school to go hunting alone. When he told Teddy and James, his best friends, they said they were jealous. Their fathers, they said, would never let them go hunting alone at twelve. It all makes Jasper feel grown up. With an ego the size of Texas, his home state, Jasper enters the woods. _Surely_ he can shoot the rabbit for supper, and the buck father would like to put away for the coming winter.

When, three hours later, he is successful and places the fat rabbit in his hunting bag and slings the deer across Shadow's saddle, Jasper feels ten feet tall.

* * *

><p>"Don't be a girl, Teddy," James says, glaring at his friend. Jasper and his two best friends have snuck out of their houses and now stand outside the window of old man Cole's.<p>

"C'mon, Ted. I've been here plenty of nights. Cole's completely out. All we have to do is get one jar, and we'll be heroes at school," Jasper is quickly learning he can be quite persuasive when he wants to.

"Jenna will thing you're Jesus, Ted. Who else would steal moonshine from old man Cole?" At the mention of Jenna's name, Teddy's face goes red and he puffs up his chest. James, the oldest at thirteen, picks up a stick and starts to jimmy the window open. When he gets it pried open, Jasper cups his hands so he can help Teddy, the shortest and thinnest, into the house.

"You have to be quick!" James reminds Teddy, as Jasper quickly and quietly runs across the yard to Cole's bedroom window. If he stirs, he'll give the warning whistle and the boys will run. He only has to stand watch for five minutes, but it feels like a lifetime before he hears James's whisper shout of "We got it!"

The boys run, laughing, to Teddy's barn, where they've agreed to stash it in the hay bales. Jasper produces his father's old flask, and they pour some moonshine inside. At school the next day, they'll show the big boys and the girls, all the people who said they were too chicken to do it.

_1858_

Jasper, James, and Teddy become legends school. But now it is summertime, and Jasper isn't in school. He's at Mr. Johnson's ranch, working on his first job. Baling the hay in the hot Houston sun has bleached his hair nearly white and tanned his skin. He's shot up like a weed, already five foot seven at thirteen, and working with the pitchfork has made him broad shouldered and strong.

On days like today, when the sun beats down so hot, Jasper steals away to the apple grove on the edge of the property. He pulls his straw hat down over his eyes, and naps under the biggest tree amongst the sweet smelling fruit. Unlike every other day he has snuck off, on this day in June, an apple falls on his head. The culprit is not gravity, but Cassia Johnson, Mr. Johnson's daughter. Her hair is darker blonde than his, and her eyes are the same shade as the blue bonnets growing in her mother's garden. She's thirteen, just like Jasper.

"I don't think Daddy would appreciate a lie-about," Jasper hears the words but is more focused on the mouth that speaks them: full and round and the color of raspberries. He's fairly sure that were it not for all the skirts and hoops, he could see up her dress where she's sitting. Instead, he rolls onto his stomach, grinning up at her.

"Lie-about? Why, Miss Cassia, I never knew you thought so lowly of me."

She picks another apple from the tree and bites into it. "Jasper Whitlock, not a girl in this town thinks lowly of you. Not even the big girls." She purses her lips. "I won't tell Daddy… if you bring me candy every week!" With that, she slides from her tree perch and practically prances back to the house, leaving Jasper shaking his head.

But every week after that day, he takes Shadow into town and buys her peppermint candy, her favorite.

_1860_

_Nine years is a good, long life for a dog,_ Jasper tells himself. Even though he is fifteen going on sixteen, tears run thick down his face. It's early, so early he doesn't think anyone else is awake. He prefers it that way, just a boy and his dog, and he thanks God that nobody is there to interrupt as he finishes patting the dirt above the grave.

The last night of Johnny's life, Jasper slept on the floor beside him. At around three in the morning, he had licked Jasper's face, a final kiss, and before the hour was done, he was gone. That is how Jasper found himself to be in the cold bleak morning of a January day, wishing it were a Saturday, not a Thursday, so he wouldn't be expected to go to school. But he does, even though Phoebe doesn't because she's caught a cold.

Jasper goes inside and washes his hands of dirt and death, his face of tears and grief. He changes into his school clothes and feels the weight of peppermint candies against his hip. Father will be up soon; he'll drive Jasper to school in the wagon if he asks. Instead, Jasper bundles up. The cold walk will do him some good.

The walk to school will be long, he knows, but he just wants to be alone before getting to school. He beats the teacher there, and he builds a fire in the little hearth so the room will be warm when Mrs. Grove gets there. She's really not much older than the kids. Only twenty-five, just seven years older than Rebecca, the oldest in the school. Jasper takes his seat in the very back row, where all the big boys sit, and stares straight ahead at the board.

He doesn't even notice when the door creaks open and someone slips in. It's still too early for Mrs. Grove, and the person who steps just inside the doorway sure isn't Mrs. Grove. It's Cassia Johnson, wrapped against the cold in a fur-trimmed coat. Jasper doesn't look away from the board; he may be sitting in this classroom, but he's a thousand miles away.

Cassia slips out of her coat, hanging it on the wall beside Jasper's, before quietly crossing the room and sliding onto the bench seat beside him. Without saying a word, she wraps her arms around him, pulling him close so that his face rests against her shoulder.

"Cassia…" Jasper lets himself be held the way he hasn't since he was ten and broke his arm. He can feel Cassia's heart beat beside his own, and her hand stroke his hair.

Softly, so softly, she places a kiss against his temple. If Jasper didn't feel so awful, he would have noted that this is the first time he's ever been this close to a girl that wasn't Ma or Phoebe or Grandma or one of his aunts. Instead, all he can think about is the fact that here, with Cassia, he has found comfort.

When he returns home, he finds a white cross in the ground above Johnny's grave, and a fairy's wreath of paper flowers. He knows it was Phoebe's doing. She used to make those rings of flowers when they were younger, to wear around her head. Now she's made a halo for Johnny.

_1861_

"Happy seventeenth birthday, Jasper," Cassia whispers, her voice as soft as the moonlight. The month is October, and it is indeed Jasper's birthday. His present from Cassia is a kiss, a real one, not like the one she gave him when Johnny died, but an honest-to-God kiss. Maybe it's just his imagination, but Jasper thinks her mouth taste sweeter than the raspberries he likened them to all those years ago.

His birthday fell on a Thursday; candy day as it had come to be known between the two. Only today, when he had given Cassia her bag of peppermints before rushing outside to play ball with James and Teddy during noon break, Cassia had given him something back: a piece of the brown paper bag that last week's candy had come in, with the words _'meet me in the barn'_ inscribed on it.

So he did. He went to the Johnson barn, which is exactly in the middle between their houses. He found her up in the hayloft, still dressed in her school clothes, reading a book by the bright full moon streaming through the window. Upon seeing him, she stood and gave him the best birthday present a _man_ had ever gotten.

* * *

><p>Just because they were growing up, that didn't mean that Jasper, Teddy, and James ever stopped pulling pranks. One day, after a particularly heavy rain, they caught frogs. And what did they do with those frogs? They slid them into the desks of all the girls at school. Mayhem ensued, but with one bashful smile from Jasper, Mrs. Grove simply shook her head and went on teaching.<p>

It's summer again, and Jasper has just pulled what he thinks is the best prank of all. Cassia likes to swim in the lake. When Cassia swims, she strips down to her under things, leaving a heap of petticoats and hoops and stockings behind. And on a blazing day in August, Jasper takes her clothes, leaving only her hoop skirt because it was too bulky to take along. He does, however, have about thirty five underskirts (but that's just his wild guess), a corset, and her dress and stocking to hide. They end up in the hay loft, where they had their first kiss.

Hours later, when Cassia finds him picketing the cows, there is a smirk on her face. "Trust you to steal a lady's clothes, Jasper Whitlock." He leans against the fence, smiling at her, pride shining from his warm brown eyes.

"Have a nice swim?" She rolls her eyes and kisses him just shy of his mouth, on his cheek.

"I'm not mad. How else will a class-cutting boy like you ever puzzle out how to undo a corset without stealing one?" With that, she leaves Jasper thinking just how _do_ you undo a corset?

Jasper _does_ figure out how to undo a corset, and Cassia lets him in the hay loft the night of her seventeenth birthday. But that's all said and done, and Jasper has exciting news to tell her. You see, in January, days after Johnny died, the southern half of America succeeded. Since then, a war has been brewing between the broken nation, and Jasper has it in his mind he's going to join the Confederate Army.

He scoops Cassia up from her seat on the ground and twirls her amongst the autumn leaves. "I'm going to be a soldier."

She quirks a blonde eyebrow at him, "And how are you going to do that?" He sets her on the ground and kisses her, hard.

"I'm going to lie."

His plan, you see, is to tell the recruitment officer he is twenty one, not seventeen. He's tall enough, being six-foot-three, and his father has already agreed to it. Mr. Whitlock would go himself, he says, were it not for his wife and Phoebe, who is now twelve. Cassia, however, is nonplussed.

"What if you die?" Jasper shakes his head.

"Such little faith in me, Cassia. I'm not going to die. I'm going to serve my years, and you'll write me letters, won't you? And when I get back, we'll get married." But Cassia is not consoled. In fact, she's _mad_.

"You can't just leave me, Jasper! It's not fair that you can just go and leave and I have to stay here, and never know if you're okay!" And she pulls his face down to hers by tugging on his suspenders and kisses him so hard and so long they both come away with bruised mouths.

Even though she hates it, she won't stop him from going. To love is to let go, right?

_1862_

Cassia does write, and it is the highlight of Jasper's army days. Sure, the fame is nice. He is the youngest general in the army, and everyone knows his name. Still, Thursdays are his favorite day. They have morphed from candy day to letter day, and without fail, there is one from Cassia. He writes to her when he can, but it is becoming harder and harder to find time.

For his eighteenth birthday letter, she sends along a handful of hay. Jasper sits on the ground, grinning wildly at this hay and the memories it conjures, while his underlings stare at him like he's lost his mind.

The army, Jasper decides, is easier to handle when there are letters from Cassia.

_1863_

Jasper never knew manners could damn you. All he'd done was what any good man would: offer three women stuck in a warzone help. They weren't normal women, though, something he found out when the two blonde ones left and the tiny Mexican girl pulled him from his horse with alarming strength.

Now Jasper doesn't know up from down, left from right. All he knows is this pain, and Cassia's name, which he whispers over and over as if that will save him. The Mexican girl keeps saying it will end soon, but how can such pain have an end?

But it does end, and Jasper finds himself in a very different kind of army. He also finds that his memories of Cassia are marred by one alarming thought: _how would her blood taste?_


End file.
